An Apology for the Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace — Reading Companion

The Evidence of Early Travellers and Scholars

Jones traces the known history of Greek colour back to Stuart and Revett’s Antiquities of Athens, which recorded traces of painted ornaments on temple mouldings. Yet those fragments were long dismissed, partly because the engraved plates made the ornaments appear as if in relief. Later investigators—Jules Goury, Professor Semper, and especially M. Hittorff of Paris—pursued the subject more systematically. Hittorff’s multi-year study produced a magnificent work that Jones treats as a key authority. The pattern is clear: each generation found physical traces, but artistic prejudice repeatedly refused to accept them as evidence of a complete system.

The 1836 Committee and the Elgin Marbles

A committee appointed to examine the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum included notable figures such as Sir Charles Eastlake, Dr. Faraday, and the architect Cockerell. They found on fragments from the Erechtheum and Propylaea engraved ornaments and a difference in texture between coloured and ground surfaces. However, they could not decide whether the rough areas were original or caused by atmospheric action on unprotected marble. Crucially, no colour remained on the sculptures themselves—but the modeller Sarti revealed that the entire surface had been washed twice with soap leys, and Dr. Faraday stated that this treatment alone would have removed every vestige of colour. The committee’s inconclusive report thus inadvertently documented the very process that erased the evidence.

Excavated Fragments and the Acropolis Finds

Mr. Bracebridge contributed a memorandum describing colours and patterns from the northern portico of the Erechtheum, where shelter from the sea breeze had preserved sculptured ornaments “as fresh and sharp as if lately finished.” At the top of the flutings a thin coat of slate-coloured paint was visible, with yellow and red traces elsewhere. More dramatically, an excavation at the south-east angle of the Parthenon in 1835–36 uncovered fragments of triglyphs, fluted columns, and a female head painted with the brightest red, blue, and yellow—vermilion, ultramarine, and straw colour. These specimens, carefully preserved in the Acropolis, provided direct physical proof that Jones could cite against the sceptics.

The Structure of Jones’s Argument

Jones does not present a single continuous treatise. The volume is built as a layered case: his own apology is followed by arguments from G. H. Lewes and W. Watkiss Lloyd, an extract from the 1836 committee report, a paper from the Royal Institute of British Architects, and a fragment on the origin of polychromy by Professor Semper. This structure mirrors the method of the Crystal Palace itself—placing the Greek court among other coloured reproductions. Each appended voice supplies a different kind of authority: scientific analysis, historical testimony, and theoretical speculation. The reader moves from Jones’s personal experiment through documented evidence to broader principles, much as a visitor would walk from one gallery to the next.

Jones’s Apology is best read as a period piece in the history of architectural debate, not as a definitive archaeological study. The excerpts show how mid‑nineteenth‑century scholars weighed visual observation against ingrained aesthetic ideals. Readers interested in the reception of classical antiquity or the history of museum display will find here a vivid snapshot of a controversy that shaped how we see Greek art today.

There’s something tender about Jones pleading for colour to be seen, not scoured away—leaving the Greek court feeling less like marble and more like memory. It put me in mind of another quiet devotion, the way watercolour once caught British light before it faded. The The development of British landscape painting in water-colours — Key Ideas to Explore companion lingers there, softly, like a half-remembered afternoon.